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Bad Times at the El Royale First Look: Chris Hemsworth in the Rain

Chris Hemsworth stands (nearly) shirtless in the rain in the first look image for Drew Goddard's 1960s noir thriller, Bad Times at the El Royale. Goddard made his name writing and producing TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and LOST before he made the jump to directing films with 2012's The Cabin in the Woods. Hemsworth actually starred in Goddard's cult hit horror/comedy before he began playing the God of Thunder in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; however, Cabin in the Woods didn't open in theaters until a year after the first Thor movie, as a result of MGM's bankruptcy in 2010.

Following the release of Cabin in the Woods, Goddard wrote Ridley Scott's space survival film The Martian - itself a multi-Oscar nominated commercial success - and helped to launch Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix, before stepping down to focus his efforts on getting Sony's Sinister Six movie off the ground. That iteration of the Spider-Man villain team-up film ultimately fell by the wayside, but Goddard is now getting a second shot at making a comic book ensemble movie, thanks to the Deadpool spinoff X-Force. Goddard will turn his full attention to that project after he wraps post-production on Bad Times, an original creation of his own making.

Bad Times at the El Royale takes place at the eponymous hotel, a rundown spot near Lake Tahoe where seven strangers - "each with a secret to bury", as the official synopsis puts it - meet up and get one final shot at redemption over the course of one crazy, fateful night. The film, which Goddard also wrote in addition to directing, reportedly takes place in the '60s, which explains why Hemsworth has something of a hippy look going in the first image from the movie. For more on that, check out Thor in the rain in the Bad Times at El Royale photo below (courtesy of Empire):

UPDATE: Additional Bad Times at the El Royale images have been released online, courtesy of EW. Take a look, below:

Joining Hemsworth as cast members in Bad Times are Oscar-winners Jeff Bridges and Russell Crowe, as well as Dakota Johnson, Nick Offerman, Jon Hamm, Cynthia Erivo (Mr. Selfridge), and Pacific Rim Uprising standout Cailee Spaeny. The film itself will be hitting theaters this October, on the same weekend that Bradley Cooper's buzzed-about remake A Star is Born and Sony's Venom solo movie hit the scene. That month in general is pretty packed with sequels and franchise titles, but Bad Times may yet manage to carve out enough room for itself to become a cult success a la Cabin in the Woods.

Goddard took a decidedly meta approach to the horror genre with his debut film, but it sounds like he might have something else in mind with his take on noir conventions with Bad Times. The film also seems to be a far cry from next month's own noir throwback - It Follows director David Robert Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake - and a nice change of pace from Hemsworth's recent big screen appearances as the Mighty Thor. A trailer is expected to be released for Bad Times at the El Royale in the near future, so stay tuned to learn more about exactly what this Cabin in the Woods reunion has in store for everyone.